


home

by allgoodlions



Category: Carmilla (Web Series), Carmilla - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, F/F, Gen, Just not here, i guess, i mean i assume danny becomes happy at some point, local ex-human ex-farm girl runs away from her problems
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-11
Updated: 2016-12-11
Packaged: 2018-09-07 19:47:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8813959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allgoodlions/pseuds/allgoodlions
Summary: It is strange to think that every step has led Danny here, to this cab, to this street, to this dark night in a city so far from anything she’s ever thought of as home. Silas is behind her, and she cannot go back. Ahead is a house and a family and a conversation she does not know how to have.





	

The redbrick rowhouse is one of many in a long, uneven line that extends like jagged teeth up either end of an unfamiliar street. Further on, the street curves off and away, broken by pools of hazy orange lamplight as it disappears by degrees into the night. Danny’s cab idles by the cobbled curb, and in the grumbling half-silence of the antiquated heater on full blast, she can hear the faint tick-tick-tick of the car’s flashing hazard lights.

She doesn’t recognize the house.

Truth is, she wouldn’t even be sure of the address if it hadn’t been for the crumpled envelope stuffed into her jacket pocket.

This isn't home. This isn't the rambling single-story farmhouse of her childhood, way out in the country with its acres and acres of broad fields cupped by hills, skirted in forest. She doesn't understand what possessed her parents to move here. Here, of all places, to this cramped city where rows of buildings crowd out the sky.

Danny wants to reach out, squash and stretch these rowhouses between her hands so they look less like books crowded on a library shelf and more like the image of home she remembers. She can't picture her family in this narrow house, on this narrow street, under this narrow strip of starless, lamp-lightened sky. There's no room to run, to stretch her arms wide, to breathe, even.

She’s restless in the close heat of the cab. The tired, cracked leather upholstery is all musk in her nose with something sharp underneath. Old sweat baked into the seats and the cabbie's shapeless cap. Crumpled gum wrappers and stray coins stashed in the ash tray add powder sweet and dirty metal to the mix. Echoes of all the cab's passengers that came before.

There's a footprint picked out in dried mud in the coarse weave of the floor mat at her feet. She slides her foot into the shape of that phantom shoe. It's about the same size.

That's the first she's moved in several long minutes, or so it feels. The cabbie, to his credit, hasn't offered any comment. Just sits and yawns occasionally, waiting while the hazards tick-tick-tick the seconds away. Maybe he's used to this pause, this teetering moment that comes just between traveling and arriving.

Danny's used to action, though. To motion. It's odd, this half-conceived reluctance to end. And to begin.

If she gets out of this cab, if she stands with her bag on the wet sidewalk and the cabbie drives away... feels like something would break. Some last filigree connection between herself and Silas and everything that came before would shatter, dissolve into a thousand unrecoverable pieces. She might spend her whole life trying to pick them all up, and even then she'd just be left with a handful of needle-sharp spindles of memory pricking her palms.

She only just resists the urge to touch those memories.

If she can hold out long enough, she figures she'll be okay. Eventually. Maybe not tomorrow, or a week from now, or a year or five years, but it'll be okay again. It'll all just become something that happened to her once, not this sharp angle that stabs savage as a knife.

With enough time she figures it'll all round out. Just some people she knew, just a place she used to live, years and miles away.

And years -- well, she's got plenty of those. More than she ever counted on. More than can be counted, so far as she knows.

The notion has settled on her by degrees. She wears it uncomfortably, something rich and heavy, a child in adult’s clothes.

Danny shrugs self-consciously, jamming clenched fists deeper into her coat pockets. The envelope rustles against her knuckles, reminding her: home.

It’d seemed the right thing in the moment, going back. She wanted her parents and her sisters close, the way a kid builds a teddy bear wall against the monsters in the closet and under the bed.

Except she’d never been that way.

There’s slight pressure along her left arm where it rests against the cab’s door, becoming half familiar in the moment. There’s weight to it, too, the imagined press of a sturdy strap couched in the crook of her elbow, the second warm and a little sweaty in the palm of her hand. It’s there in her mind’s eye: a wooden shield she’d gotten from a festival one year, all painted up with a unicorn rampant, rearing white and silver on an empty field. She used to wish it was a lion.

There was a wooden sword to go with it, black-handled with a silver blade all dented and nicked from a hundred hundred hard-fought battles. It fit into a scabbard that she belted at her waist with a burgundy silk cord.

It comes back to her more quickly now, playing dress-up in the old house. With her sword and shield she’d defended her sisters from dragons and and ogres, which had involved a lot of jumping out of trees. Her sisters had tied their handkerchief favors to her arms and taken turns being rescued.

Danny’s smiling vaguely at the dark street beyond the cab’s window. She catches herself at it and the smile twists to become something wry and mocking before dropping off her face altogether. It had been a long time since she’d thought of that. It had been a long time since she’d been that little girl who jumped out of trees with the unshakable faith that knights were brave and good and monsters were huge and terrible and breathed fire and that the ground would catch her and she would not break against it. She wonders where that little girl has gone.

There must have been a moment when she’d shed that wooden shield and sword for the last time, tucked them back into the tub of dress-up clothes and never played with them again. She supposes that her entire childhood had been shed by similar degrees.

She’d grown older. She’d grown taller. She played outside less and studied more. A storm blew down the chestnut tree that had been the perfect height for jumping, and she’d helped her father break it down and stack the logs against the side of the garden shed. Her father stopped kissing her goodnight, and her mother, who used to read to Danny and her sisters every night, stopped half way through _Watership Down_ and never picked it up again. Her eldest sister became interested in music, and suddenly there were recitals to attend. Soccer tournaments and school plays and science fairs followed soon after, and, step by step, she left the little girl with her unicorn shield and silver sword behind.

It is strange to think that every one of those steps has led her here, to this cab, to this street, to this dark night in a city so far from anything she’s ever thought of as home.

She can’t go back. She knows that.

Even if she could somehow tightrope-walk all the way back to the start of things, she knows, deep down, it’d still end the same way. The shield and sword were only wooden, after all. They would not have stopped a dragon or a vampire or Theo’s knife or her death.

And so.

Danny shifts in her seat again, this time more purposefully as she scuffs out the muddy footprint in the floor mat. _Enough now. Enough._

She reaches into her coat pocket and pulls out her wallet, thumbs through the bills with conscious precision and makes herself say, “Thanks for the ride,” when she hands the cash over the cabbie’s shoulder. If he says something back, it’s lost in the dull clunk as she pops the curbside door open and unfolds from the claustrophobic back seat, dragging her bag out after her.

The muscles of her legs are tight from the long ride and they protest the abrupt movement. Still, the ache is good. _Moving_ is good. She shuts the car door behind her, and there is nothing profound in that moment because she _makes_ it nothing. Catching hold of the curling hollowness in her chest, she crushes it down to a single beat of hesitation that ends -- that must end-- when the car door slams and she turns deliberately away.

Her aching legs and the cool, damp air on her face are almost enough to distract her from the sound of tires crunching wetly against pavement.

Almost.

The cabbie pulls into the street and drives off. A last wash of taillights slides around a corner, and the cab’s truly gone. City silence tumbles in around her, distant sirens and the bass rumble of the car now a street or two away. Somewhere not too far off, someone’s swearing quietly and taking out the trash. A bottle smashes, high and tinkling. It’s a busy, unfamiliar silence, and something about it pricks at the nape of Danny’s neck. It’s an almost vibratory hum that spindles through her spine and sets her on edge.

She regards the recessed front door with its hammered brass numbers that match the address in her coat pocket. It’s only a few feet away, really. Just up a flight of steps.

Still, she’s afraid that if she takes those steps towards the house she will not be able to take them back. If she crosses the threshold, she will have to explain. She will have to take these past few months and lay them out in some way that makes sense, in words that do not seem to fit in her mouth. It’s all become so jumbled inside her, an ugly, knotted thing, ragged at the edges, too raw to touch. If she has to say it all out loud, if she has to _hear_ herself say it…

She takes a step away.

Then another.

And another.

Silas is behind her, and she cannot go back. Ahead is a house and a family and a conversation she does not know how to have.

Up until a few months ago, she never turned her back on anyone, never ran from anything. Deep down, she’d always been that little girl with the silver sword and unicorn shield who jumped out of trees and rescued girls and knew what was right and what was wrong.

But there’s this sort of directionless urgency that catches her up now. She is somebody different. Set adrift, she is somebody she hardly recognizes. Somebody she hardly likes.

She hitches her bag higher on her shoulder, sets her teeth, and walks away, down the narrow street that curves off and away, skirting pools of lamplight until the city night swallows her up.

And Danny Lawrence does not go home again.

**Author's Note:**

> I mean what's the point of fictional characters if you can't project a little.


End file.
